Poorly Executed Pedestrian Access Around St. Louis Federal Reserve

Yesterday I posted about the challenges crossing 4th Street at Locust (Crosswalks & Curb Ramps Needed at 4th & Locust) to get to the Federal Reserve.  Today I want to share problems with crossing Broadway (5th) at Locust and St. Charles at Broadway to reach the Federal Reserve.

The situation, above, differs from 4th in that here a crosswalk exists on the pavement.  However, there is no curb ramp on the far side. Like 4th, this was done when the Federal Reserve took over this block of Locust for their pedestrian plaza.

From the Post-Dispatch on December 11, 2003:

A $13 MILLION PLAN to restore the Security Building took an important step forward — and so it seems did a proposed $90 million investment by the 500-pound gorilla next door, the Federal Reserve. … The designs for the Security Building, by the way, revealed another interesting transformation: a Fed plan to replace Locust Street between Fourth and Broadway with a pedestrian plaza.

So the Federal Reserve spent $90 million but they couldn’t include a couple of curb ramps in newly poured concrete?  Unacceptable!  But in November 2005 the Downtown St. Louis Partnership (now Partnership for Downtown St. Louis) gave the Federal Reserve an award for the plaza.

There is one spot where both ends of the crosswalk have curb ramps, shown above.  Recently the Federal Reserve completed their expansion, which included a new sidewalk along St. Charles St.

On the right you will see a curb ramp at the corner of the new work by the Federal Reserve.  Not sure where someone is supposed to go from there.  The detectable warnings direct the blind into the middle of the intersection.  I suppose someone could cross Broadway since an exit from a parking garage could serve as a dangerous curb ramp on this side of Broadway.

When trying to cross St. Charles there is a curb ramp on this side of the street, between the building corner and the traffic signal.  However, the ramp for the other side is way out at the corner, hidden from view by the blue & yellow boxes.  Brilliant!  I guess for only $90 million you can’t expect much?

Keep in mind that others, such as parents with strollers, use curb ramps.  These issues are personally frustrating to me but they make St. Louis less than ideal for all pedestrians.

– Steve Patterson

Crosswalks & Curb Ramps Needed at 4th & Locust

Pedestrians trying to cross 4th Street at Locust face an interesting combination of ramps and signals.  Neither side has a marked crosswalk.  On the north side of Locust there is an older ramp on the east side of 4th but when the St. Louis Federal Reserve didn’t bother to include a ramp on the west side.

The south side of Locust has the opposite problem, a ramp on the west side but not one on the east.  This side, however, does include a pedestrian signal.  However, a crosswalk is badly  needed here because motorists on the one-way street don’t know where to stop when they get a red light.  This is a dangerous intersection for the able-bodied pedestrian and impossible for the disabled pedestrian.

St. Louis vacated Locust between 4th & Broadway (5th) but nobody ensured that pedestrians could get to/from this one-block pedestrianized street.

– Steve Patterson

North 14th Street Finally Reopened To Vehicle Traffic

In March 1977 the North 14th Street Pedestrian Mall opened with high expectations.  However, the high expectations quickly turned to high vacancy as merchants closed up shop. Retailers have long known the importance of providing some on-street parking in front of their establishments but over 100 pedestrian malls had been built in North America by 1977 and St. Louis didn’t want to be left out of the trend.

Just fourteen years later, in 1991, the mall was nearly dead.  It had already been this way for a while.  It had, perhaps, one good year of life.

In July a celebration was held to mark the completion of the street but delayed streetlights meant the city wouldn’t permit vehicles.  Prior to the mall the sidewalks were narrow and broken.  After the mall there was far more sidewalk than pedestrians.  Today the street offers a balance between pedestrian & motorist. With construction time, North 14th was out of balance for 34 years, a very long time when the failed urban planning experiment prevented organic revitalization of the street.

– Steve Patterson

Reaching My Polling Place

My polling place is just under a mile west of my loft, just west of Jefferson at the Heritage House senior housing building located at 2800 Olive.  In the past few elections I have driven my car but I decided to use transit for yesterday’s election.  The bus ride was direct and short.

Exiting the bus at Leffingwell Ave & Olive St. I noticed the first problem, I couldn’t cross Leffingwell due to no curb ramp on the other side of the street. I needed to cross Olive St. anyway so I did that first.

Unfortunately, the same problem existed when trying to cross Leffingwell on this side of Olive.  Since I needed  to cross the street to vote I had to look for alternate places to cross.

Halfway down the block I found a place to cross, on the east side of Leffingwell was a drive from an alley and the other side was a driveway for my destination.  My first preference to cross a street is a signalized intersection.  Second is a 4-way stop and the least desirable is mid-block. I was well aware that

I have reported this lack of curb ramps to St. Louis’ Citizens Service Bureau via Twitter (@csbSTL).

– Steve Patterson

Update on Taxi Stand on Sidewalk

I’ve been blogging about the placement of a taxi stand on the sidewalk in front of the convention center for years, with few results. In January 2007 I posted this video of a taxi exiting the stand via the pedestrian crosswalk:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRusfBYJ-_8

That prompted the Convention & Visitors Commission (CVC) to add bollards at the two crosswalk locations across Washington Ave.  This prevented the taxis from exiting onto the crosswalk but it didn’t address the primary problem: the former sidewalk was now occupied by taxis.  Where should the pedestrians walk?

Pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk in front of America’s Center has increased since the old St. Louis Centre pedestrian bridge came down but it has still been hard to capture the problem in still images or video.  But Sunday after the Rams game the sidewalks were packed and it became easy to photograph & video the problem with parking taxis smack dab in the middle of the pedestrian sidewalk.

The following video is seven minutes of people walking around the taxis, not riveting but telling of the problem.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CQb8asXp3A

Happily I think a solution is near, I will meet with the CVC next week to see a drawing of their concept on how to return the sidewalk space to pedestrians. I’m finally optimistic about the situation.

– Steve Patterson